One of the school districts in metro Atlanta with the longest road to recovery after Irma is DeKalb County.

More than 50 schools are in the dark and dozens of others suffered severe damage.

Avondale Elementary School was one of the hardest hit. Several trees were blocking the doors, and one was snapped in half. With damage like this, there's no telling when students will get back into the classrooms.

In addition to snapped trees, power lines and a utility pole were barely standing. It's one of the reasons why Superintendent Dr. Stephen Green is keeping doors closed through Wednesday.

When asked how hard a decision it is to close schools, Dr. Green said, "It's tough because you weigh a lot of different variables. Safety trumps everything."

To get a clear idea of the severity of damage, CBS46 pulled the following numbers.

As of Tuesday night, about half of DeKalb County Schools were without power, more than 30 have roof or tree damage and dozens of others have roads blocked or internet issues.

Anne Sorenson says she expected outages, but nothing like this.

"Definitely thought we would get power back today," says Sorenson. "I figured it would be six, 12, maybe 24 hours."

Her daughter, a Fulton County Schools student, is enjoying what she calls a mini-vacation.

Dr. Green says the plan is to assess the damage daily, so on Wednesday, he'll check out the conditions and make a decision about closings school on Thursday.